Miami Vice

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Review: It's good to have the Smuggler's Blues again.

By Stax

The big-screen version of Miami Vice is in a no-win scenario. Purists will decry its variations from the 1980's TV series that inspired it. (Seriously, how many more times does one have to read about the film's lack of pastels? The series itself veered away from pastels by the third season.) Those wanting a nostalgia trip will be denied it. Viewers expecting a big, bombastic Bad Boys or Fast and the Furious-style romp will also come away disappointed.

Fans of writer-director Michael Mann, as well as those who love their cop movies dark and gritty, will respond favorably to the movie, which is nothing short of a di-Vice-ive affair. You will either love it or loathe it. There seems to be no middle ground in the responses to the film so far, which suggests that Mann did something right to have provoked such strong reactions. Although one might not be too far off in suspecting that some negative critical reaction has more to do with a growing, palpable disdain for stars Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell, and even for Mann, than it does with the movie. One wonders what the reactions might have been had Vice come out a year ago instead.

More has been made of the film's apparent departures from the series, which Mann exec produced but did not create, than is really the case. The film's plot culls many narrative elements from several first and second season episodes. The big-screen Vice is essentially a feature film version of the first season episode "Smuggler's Blues." The movie has the same basic plot as that episode. (Consider this a SPOILER WARNING.)

In both versions, Miami-Dade P.D. undercover narcs James "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs are enlisted to infiltrate a Latin American narco-trafficking network after a mole has been discovered inside a joint Federal task force. To lend further credence to Tubbs' cover, fellow Vice cop Trudy Joplin will pose as his wife. Crockett and Tubbs have to sneak into South America by air and, once there, find themselves in a danger zone where their badges don't count. They meet with a violent middleman in a dank, ominous club. There is talk of "closing each other's eyes" but how that would be bad for business. The deal goes down but once they are back stateside violence and double-dealings ensue. Trudy is captured and held hostage in a trailer park with a bobby-trapped bomb attached to her. It's then up to the Vice cops to rescue her.

Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell; click for more pics from Miami Vice.

Other narrative elements in the film harken back to similar ones on the series. In the movie, Crockett (a gruff, mustachioed Farrell, looking more like Duane Allman than Don Johnson) falls for Isabella (Gong Li), a businesswoman who serves as the financial brains of the bad guys' operation. Crockett begins romancing Isabella in the hopes of acquiring information (and vice-versa) but they soon genuinely fall for each other. It is not meant to be, especially after she discovers that her lover is really a cop. This relationship is reminiscent of the one that Tubbs had with Angelina Calderone in the two-part "Calderone's Return."

There are more examples but you get the point. Miami Vice is different from the series insofar as there are no flamingos, white linen suits or an alligator named Elvis. Otherwise, the thematic essence of the series and the core of who Crockett and Tubbs (played here by a no-nonsense Foxx) were has been preserved and updated.